I'm just old enough to remember watching Schoolhouse Rock on ABC, and getting all those catchy but educational songs stuck in my head. The series of shorts that popped up between cartoons on Saturday mornings was conceived by Thomas G. Yohe and based on the simple idea that rock lyrics stick in kids' minds easily, so why not make them educational? The series has become one of the defining pop cultural icons of Generation X, and YesButNoButYes has a brief history of the series and the men and women behind it, complete with video clips. The piece mentions Jack Sheldon (the "I'm Just a Bill" guy) lent his voice to an episode of Family Guy, but it forgets to mention he was also the voice of the "Amendment To Be" in an episode of The Simpsons: "There's a lot of flag burners / who have too much freedom / I wanna make it legal for policemen / to beat 'em." It's a great bit of TV history, definitely worth checking out.
Where are the Schoolhouse Rock singers now?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-11-2006 @ 8:26PM
MrsEldubya said...
Jack Sheldon use to be in the Merv Griffin band on his daily variety/talk show. He also appeared recently on the Ellen show when they did their musical episode. I remember him very well and recognize his voice immediately when I hear it.
I gave our daughter the DVD set for Schoolhouse Rocks when it came out. She was studying to be an elementary school teacher and I thought they would come in handy.
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10-11-2006 @ 8:39PM
Danny Edwards said...
Jack Sheldon also did a great Schoolhouse Rock parody episode of Johnny Bravo.
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10-11-2006 @ 11:24PM
erroneous_nick said...
The idea that educational rock lyrics would stay inside young heads was right on the money. I loved Schoolhouse Rock when I was young and still remember most of them, at least bits of most of them. I, too, bought the DVD set for my children and they fell in love with them.
Why aren't new ones still being made today? It was one hell of an idea for teaching young people about all sorts of subjects they might otherwise never have been interested in. Great ideas like Schoolhouse Rock should continue to flourish.
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10-11-2006 @ 11:54PM
Dwayne Conyers said...
Multiplication Rock (the original incarnation) helped me get though math. I'm not sure if my teacher understood why there was so much humming going on during math quizzes...
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10-12-2006 @ 10:00AM
Brendon Carr said...
That Simpsons parody was right on the money: The lyrics were brilliant and the return of Jack Sheldon's voice made it an instant classic.
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